User:Marisauna/sandbox

Article ideas: Lists of arcade boards (modeled after Sega page): Namco, Capcom, Konami. Stan Prokopenko.

Expand ideas: Jejudo (colonial and modern history), El Camino Real (California) (route length and Mission Walkers), Organized religion (criticism of organized religion), Self-immolation (Mahayana Buddhism, style), Soviet space program articles in general, organize Western Shoshone-related articles, Terminator Salvation (arcade game)

A lead rewrite is in order
Hi all,

I apologize for blowing in so boldly earlier this month with lead and infobox edits. These edits were reverted, which is why I'm here in the talk section. I am here to say that I cringe when I read this lead, and it seems to have turned even worse since I last touched it. It's unwieldy, unorganized, and overall a big stinking mess.

My concerns, as follows.

- Unsourced lists of genres. These appear three times in the article introduction, once in the infobox and twice in the lead text. Clearly these are a longstanding problem, since they were brought up over four years ago and nothing has constructively changed since then. In my lead rewrite from ~the 5th of this month, my primary goal was getting rid of these lists. Here are some especially bad cases:
 * "church: Southern gospel, spirituals" (in infobox). "Church music" is an incredibly broad category, one that spans 2,000 years of Christian religious music. Therefore, I assert that references to "church music" are non-constructive bloat, and that the traditions it describes would be better served under a "traditional American" label or the like.


 * "...and the cowboy Western music styles of Hawaiian, New Mexico, Red Dirt, Tejano, and Texas country." One editor who rolled my changes back claimed I had a prejudice against including country's "origins in Western music." I have no prejudice against this; my prejudice is against poorly written references to these origins. And of all my issues with this lead, this selection is the one that drives me furthest up the wall.


 * As with the rest of the lead, reference to Western music is followed by an indiscriminate vomit of genres. Contemporary styles of Western music, such as Red Dirt and Texas country, seem to be listed as antecedents of country as a whole, and Hawaiian music is tacked on as an afterthought. Additionally, Tejano and New Mexico music have not-insubstantial overlap with northern Mexican music, an issue which is discussed below. This statement is followed by six consecutive citations, most of which should be placed in the middle, after commas, so the reader can tell where specific assertions originate from. Also, none of these are strictly "cowboy music."


 * It has historical roots in the indigenous music of North America, Celtic music, early music of the British Isles, jota, Irish traditional music, singing cowboys, corrido, ranchera, norteño, French folk music, African-American music, and other traditional folk music traditions. This is uncited and entirely superfluous. The information here, where substantiated, should be merged into a single, unified account of country's contributing musical traditions.


 * Most of the listed traditions are too tenuous or obscure to warrant inclusion: these include Native American music, Celtic, Irish, early British, and French folk music, and jota. Mexican (corrido, norteño, ranchera) and African-American music, on the other hand, deserve more attention than they currently receive. Also, "singing cowboys"? The last time I checked, those were from Hollywood movies (This is even how the article body uses the term! Come on!). "Cowboy ballads" is a better, more accurate turn of phrase, if we're to include anything like it at all.


 * There is a similar issue in the "origins" section of the infobox, which lists some of the traditions from this list: either substantiate your claims, or don't add them at all.

- Country and ethnic music. The lines distinguishing America's ethnic musical traditions are blurry and indistinct, and nowhere is this more apparent than in discussions of country music. Country has a complex ethnic and racial dynamic that should be addressed more thoroughly in its article text.

There are many discussions that echo similar concerns, visible on this page of Talk alone.